Friday, November 27, 2015

SpiceJet becomes SourJet

A Travelogue

Jetting off to Tirupati ?
‘Air India’ – Not liking to be in the air
Feels homely on the land;
‘SpiceJet’ – ‘seating’ – sorry;
Mistakenly spelt – ‘cheating’;
‘Checking in’ – you are checked out;
Baggage – gaming in numbers;
‘Free meal’ – Damn it you paid for it;
‘Bag out first’ – Pay up first;
‘Enjoy extra leg space’; keep your legs short;
Long legs? Choose the first two rows;
Just it costs you only five hundred bucks!!
‘Smiles’ Miles apart for, they are spicy;
Crew, Arrogance is their virtue;
‘Convenience’ – a dream;
‘Comfort’ – whose is it any way?
Merry ride? Nay, a dreary ride;
SpiceJet  joining the Sourjet league!
Any way the stocks are fully subscribed.

 * SG 1042 27.11.2015 - Tirupati to Hyderabad 




Economics of Education

Volume XIII Part 4 November 25, 2015 Business Advisor


Economics of Education

B. Yerram Raju

National Education Policy is scheduled for release shortly. The fears of FDI in education are looming large. Already the privatization of education during the last two decades has eroded the values and loaded the backs of children with loads of books. Lower middle class bemoan that qualitative education is unaffordable.

Several private schools even at kindergarten charge a lakh of rupees for admitting a child. The non-public ‘public schools’ charge the fees much above. At the high school and college levels per candidate fees is touching the roof. And there is no guarantee for quality delivery of inputs. Most have teachers less than deserving qualifications.

Government schools and colleges have poor infrastructure and poorer delivery mechanisms. Had all the civil servants, elected representatives chosen to send their wards to the government schools, their plight would be not what they are: with no toilets, no power, no play grounds, and in several of them even no teachers!! Yet, the threat of transfer or other punishments to teachers make them adopt unholy means to assure pass for all their wards.

Banks have no time for customer


What you get instead are hidden costs for supposedly myriad services, most of which don’t seem to exist.

One leading new generation private bank does not disburse cash other than through ATM/debit card withdrawals. Yet it charges Rs.1,000 annually for issue of the debit card, on top of keeping the minimum average balance of Rs.10,000 for a basic savings bank account for a customer.

Why choose such a bank? Because other banks, though with lower minimum balance requirements, are worse when it comes to customer service.

I credited a couple of cheques to my pension account with the SBI drawn on another local PSB branch on November 6. While one of the instruments for Rs.10,000 got credited on the same day, the other for Rs.70,000 was credited only six days later after relentless pursuit. A complaint email gets the standard response: “This is a system generated response. Your complaint takes 48 hours to respond. Please do not reply.”

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Capital Infusion in PSBs – Need and the Deed


Capitalization of Public Sector Banks has been incorporated as one of the seven items in ‘Indra Dhanush’, dubbed as part of Banking Sector Reforms.  Before addressing the issue of such capitalization it is important to understand some of the historical developments in banking globally and the way different countries responded to addressing the issue of refurbishing capital in the banks.

As part of the global financial system, Reserve Bank of India made us to believe that banks in India have to fall in line with capital adequacy norms under Basel regulations. Even prior to the embrace of capital regulations of Basel India had CRR and SLR as regulatory instruments to safeguarding the financial stability of banks. 70 percent of the Banks’ assets in India are in the public sector.

A Consensual Agenda for Labour Reforms


‘Creating an ambience where both workers and managements understand their rights and duties is no tall order’.

The Centre is engaged in serious discussions with trade unions over the new labour code, with a view to improving the ease of doing business. But missing from the debate is the issue of the obligations of workers. During the 1960s and 1970s, workers’ education, aided by the government, provided them with the opportunity to know their rights. But the whole campaign was on rights and not obligations. Once rights are conferred on any group, and they become binding, it becomes difficult to reduce or deprive such rights.